“If I do, will you take me with you?”
Connor has already realized they have little choice but to take him, but he plays this hand close. “I’ll consider it.”
Cam is silent for a moment, holding emotionless eye contact with Connor. Then he says “P, S, M, H, Y, A, R, E, H, N, L, R, A.”
“What?”
“It’s a thirteen-character ID on the public nimbus. As for the password, it’s an anagram of Risa Ward. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”
“Why should I care what you have stored on the cloud?”
“You’ll care when you see what it is.”
Connor looks around the cluttered basement, finding a pen and a notepad among the debris on a table. He tosses them to Cam. “Write down the ID. Not all of us have photographic memories stitched into our heads. And I’m not guessing at passwords, so you’ll write that down too.”
Cam sneers at him, but obliges the request. When Cam is done, Connor takes the paper, putting it in his pocket for safekeeping, then locks Cam in the basement and returns to Una’s apartment.
“I’ve decided to take Cam with us,” he tells Lev and Grace, neither of whom seem surprised.
50 • Lev
He breaks the news to Connor in the morning—just a few hours before Pivane is due to take them to the car that’s waiting for them outside the north gate. He thinks Connor will be furious, but that’s not his reaction. Not at first. The look on Connor’s face is one of pity—which Lev finds even worse than anger.
“They don’t want you here, Lev. Whatever fantasy you’ve got in your head about staying here, you’ve gotta lose it. They don’t want you.”
It’s only half-true, but it hurts to hear all the same. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells Connor. “It’s what I want that matters, not what they want.”
“So you’re just going to disappear here? Pretend you’re a ChanceFolk kid, living the simple life on the rez?”
“I think I can make a difference here.”
“How? By going hunting with Pivane and reducing the rabbit population?” Now Connor’s voice starts to rise as his anger comes to the surface. Good. Anger is something Lev can deal with.
“They need to start listening to outside voices. I can be that voice!” he tells Connor.
“Listen to yourself! After all you’ve been through, how can you still be so naive?”
Now it’s Lev’s turn to get angry. “You’re the one who thinks talking to some old woman is going to change the world. If anyone is deluding themselves, it’s you!”
That leaves Connor with nothing to say, maybe because he knows Lev is right.
“How can you walk away,” Connor finally says, “when they’re about to overthrow the Cap-17 law?”
“Do you really think anything you or I can do will change that?”
“Yes!” Connor yells. “I do. And I will. Or I’ll die trying.”
“Then you don’t need my help. I’ll just be an anchor around your neck. Let me do something useful here instead of just tagging along.”
Connor’s expression hardens. “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care.” Which he obviously does. Then he tosses a card at Lev, which he fumbles a bit before catching.
“What’s this?”
“Read it. It was supposed to be your new identity once we left the rez.”
It’s a fake Arápache ID, with a bad picture of him he doesn’t remember taking. The name on the ID is “Mahpee Kinkajou.” It makes Lev smile. “I like it,” Lev says. “I think I’ll keep my new identity. What name did they give you?”
Connor looks at his own ID. “Bees-Neb Hebííte,” Connor says. “Elina says it means ‘stolen shark.’ ” He looks at the shark on his arm for a moment and opens his fingers, releasing his fist.
“Thank you for getting me out of the Graveyard,” he tells Lev, his anger resolving into a reluctant acceptance of the situation and maybe a begrudging respect for Lev’s choice. “And thanks for saving me from the parts pirate. I’d probably be shipped around the world in pieces by now if it weren’t for you.”
Lev shrugs. “It’s nothing. It wasn’t so hard.” Which they both know isn’t true.
51 • Una
Una thought she’d be relieved that her obligation to Pivane was now over and her uninvited house guests would be leaving. However, the prospect of being alone with the knowledge of where Wil’s hands have gone and where all his talent resides—a knowledge she can share with no one—is a difficult burden to bear. Things may go back to the way they were, but for Una, they will never be normal again.
She wishes her parents were here, or Elder Lenna, her mentor who left her the luthier shop—but they have all retired to Puerto Peñasco, a resort town on the Sea of Cortez that caters to ChanceFolk retirees. Perhaps Una could retire at nineteen—just pick up and move down there, spending her days like an old widow who never actually had the chance to marry.
The Tashi’nes are expected to come at nightfall, removing her guests and leaving her in ambivalent solitude. Now Cam will be going as well. She had thought she would be asked to sequester him a little while longer before flinging him back into the world, but he’ll be gone with the others.
She busies herself that afternoon working on a new satinwood guitar, bending and bracing the sides by hand; then just before dark, she hears music coming from the basement. She knows it must be Cam, and try as she might, she cannot bring herself to ignore it. She unlocks the door and slowly descends.
Cam sits in a chair, playing an old flamenco guitar he must have found in some forgotten corner and tuned on his own. The music coming from that old guitar seems to suck the oxygen out of the room. Una can’t catch her breath. It’s a powerful tune he plays, laden with rage and regret, but also with peaceful resolve. This is nothing Wil had ever played in his life, but is most definitely of Wil’s unique composition.
Cam is too absorbed in the music to look up, but he knows Una is there. He must know. She doesn’t want to speak, for words will break the spell woven by Wil’s fingers on the strings. Cam crescendos, holds on the penultimate chord, then allows the song its conclusion, those final tones resonating in every hollow of the basement, including the hollow that Una knows resides within her. The silence that follows feels as important as the music that came before it, as if it’s also a part of the piece. She finds she can’t break that silence.
Finally Cam looks to her. “I wrote that for you,” he says. The expression on his face is hard to read, for, like her, he is filled with the many emotions the song carried.
In some inexplicable way, Una feels violated. How dare he push so deeply into her with his music? His music, because Cam has layered his own soul upon Wil’s. Something new, built upon the foundation laid down by the monsters who created him.
“Did you like it?” he asks.
How can she answer that question? That piece of music wasn’t just for her; it was her. Somehow he distilled every ounce of her being into harmony and dissonance. He might as well ask if she likes herself—a question that has become just as complicated as the tonal qualities of the song.
Instead of answering, she says, with her voice catching in her throat, “Promise me you will never play that again.”
Cam is surprised by her request. He considers it and says, “I promise that I will never play it for anyone but you.” Then he puts down the guitar and stands. “Good-bye, Una. Knowing you has been”—he hesitates in search of the word—“necessary. For both of us, maybe.”
Una finds herself drawn by his gravity, as she has been since he first appeared in her shop. Now she finds herself unable to resist it. She steps close to him. Looking to his left hand, she clasps it and caresses it. Then she looks to his right hand and takes it as well. Never looking up from those hands, she intertwines her fingers with his.